


Bard with a Death Wish

by Sheryl_Holmes



Series: Geraskier One-Shots [3]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Geralt is tender, Geralt wants to know, Geraskier Week, Geraskier Week 2020, Hurt/Comfort, If you don't cry I haven't done my job, Jaskier has a death wish, Jaskier | Dandelion Has a Past, M/M, Realization, Sad, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), why must Jaskier suffer?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22787587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheryl_Holmes/pseuds/Sheryl_Holmes
Summary: Jaskier recognizes Geralt from his reputation—except his reputation is extremely bad, so then why does he go careening into his life? It’s either because Jaskier has a death wish, or because he is frighteningly principled about giving people second chances—even if “people” are mutant immortals known for a total lack of empathy and a penchant for butchering mouthy humans.On second thought, Jaskier HIMSELF is a mouthy human.  Even if giving Geralt a second chance is his primary motive, by default there has to be a death wish in there, somewhere.(Possibly) Platonic Pairing.  Geralt realizes how f*ked up Jaskier is.  Jaskier plays fast and loose with his own life.  Geralt decides to fix this shit.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Geraskier One-Shots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634668
Comments: 32
Kudos: 500
Collections: Abby's Witcher Collection





	Bard with a Death Wish

**Author's Note:**

> First time ever writing hurt/comfort. This is a week of a lot of firsts for me, ya'll.  
> This is day 4/5 of Geraskier Week 2020 (I merged two prompts). The prompt for day four was Hurt/Comfort, and for day five was Realization. This fic has a heavy dose of both. But mostly, if I'm gonna be perfectly frank, it's got a whole world of hurtin'. 
> 
> Check out the Tumblr for this fic prompt series here: https://geraskierweek.tumblr.com/  
> And this right here is my humblr Tumblr: https://sherylholmes.tumblr.com/
> 
> Enjoy!

The problem is this: Geralt never took Jaskier for the suffer-in-silence type. That was in part owing to the fact that Jaskier was _never_ silent; he even hummed when he dreamt, a propensity of his that nearly drove Geralt to murder him as he slept. But even beyond that, Jaskier’s aura was so giddy, his mannerisms so flamboyant, and Geralt’s perception so strong that he was completely fooled. But it only stood to reason that if he missed something, it would be something having to do with the bard. Geralt had already made the inference that the bard used humor to hide his feelings, but Jaskier seemed to wear his every emotion plainly in his features so that Geralt had never imagined he was hiding them _well_.

He always talked about his hometown on the coast to pass the time. And, God, was there a lot of time. Granted, the life of a witcher (and, by extension, his bard companion) was that of monster-hunting. But there was also a mind-numbing number of days spent walking and sleeping and hunting for small game, with far-too-many similar landscapes stretching in-between. Geralt had long ago gotten used to the more mundane aspects of his lifestyle, but for Jaskier, the occasional monster was a blessed reprieve. He had, after all, followed Geralt for this great adventure, which had Geralt occasionally wondering why Jaskier stayed, after all. Were the adrenaline highs after dry spells truly worth it, Geralt wondered, or was some other thing keeping Jaskier with him? Sometimes, when he looked at the bard, he could swear his good mood had fucking nothing to do with seeing the witcher fell a kikimora. He tried not to consider that particular thought too deeply. 

Whatever the reason, Jaskier was there, on and off, for years. And every time he found himself accompanied by the chipper man, Geralt was regaled with hideously dull tales of the village where Jaskier was raised: how his father had taught him to sing, how he nearly died of some kind of food allergy that swelled his cheeks to twice their size, how he was a chubby child to begin with, how the local butcher was ready to cut a different kind of meat after he found his wife in bed with the blacksmith, how Jaskier had a dog he adored that he had given the unfortunate name of Potato, and how his mother had taught him to play the lute. He spoke of the ocean—of all its secrets, its silence, its vast beauty and overwhelming depth. The cliffs had been his favorite place to go when he’d had an argument with his father about his future as his heir, for his father was a baron. 

Geralt endured all these ramblings with surprising self-control, but once he did raise his eyebrow when Jaskier spoke of his baron father. Jaskier had grinned and told him not to worry; dear old dad was still healthy enough to run the damn parish on his own, without the help of his politically inept wandering only son. “He won’t be tracking you down any time soon, demanding to know what you’ve done with my virtue,” Jaskier had said airily, strumming his lute to a tune only he could hear. To his surprise, Geralt had rewarded him with a snort that could have been mistaken for laughter.

It was his mother he spoke of the most, though. Yes, she had eyes like the ocean—“Not just their color, my witcher friend, oh no! Her eyes are as deep and sparkling as the clearest, most massive body of water you have ever seen!” Her hair was black as obsidian and shined twice as bright in the rays of the sun. “Oh, and her voice!” Jaskier had clutched at his gold-embroidered purple vest then, as if gripping his heart, grinning into the sunlight as they ambled down the dirt path. “Geralt, whenever next you’re in the area, I _must_ have my mother sing for you!” A grunt was his only answer, but Jaskier never needed much encouragement for speaking, regardless. He spent the next two hours telling Geralt about the songs his mother had written for him when he was a child, his inspiration for becoming a bard.

Geralt was quite used to this. He had lived through a good ten years of these ramblings, ever since he had met Jaskier at the tender age of seventeen. A decade of hearing about all of this, and Geralt had filed away bits of information he had certainly never wanted to know. Nevertheless, he knew enough by now to tell Jaskier’s stories back to him—and that right there should have been the red flag. It was probably his supposed total lack of interest that could account for his missing it, or perhaps it was the slow way it revealed itself, but Geralt never noticed how Jaskier failed to update any of his stories. He never spoke of the most recent visit, only that he had been home and _it was lovely, thank you_. Honestly, Geralt should have known, and once he _did_ know, he hated himself for not realizing sooner.

***

The revelation came the only way they ever came in Geralt’s life: in blood.

Worst of all was the utter _mediocrity_ , the _normalcy_ of the thing. If anything were to happen to a centuries-old mutant with a history of magical violence and a foolhardy bard who sang of pugilistic, otherworldly glory, it should have been something _unearthly_. Instead, it was totally human, and wasn’t that the most evil of all?

Jaskier always stayed behind a-ways when Geralt was in a bad mood, and since they had been kicked out of _yet another inn_ because Jaskier _yet again_ put his “sausage” in the wrong “pantry,” the witcher was none-too-happy with him. He wasn’t so far back that he couldn’t catch up to Geralt and Roach, and it wasn’t that Geralt was unaware of his surroundings, but some special mix of their physical distance, the shifting direction of the wind, and Geralt’s bad mood made reaction time slower than usual. Rather quickly, they were come upon by a group of highwaymen who didn’t know what was good for them.

They were ugly, and they were four. And Geralt had three of them bleeding into the weeds with two strokes of his steel. But witcher speed is not perfect; it can be enhanced with potions, but it isn’t naturally so significantly superior to a human’s that it would have allowed Geralt to cross yards in seconds. As such, he was just far enough away from Jaskier that he couldn’t kill the last man fast enough. And Jaskier, with a nonchalance that Geralt couldn’t quite believe, grinned in the highwayman’s face, spread his arms in a friendly feint, then slammed his fisted strumming hand into the thief’s jaw. There was a crack, and a grunt, and a flare of rage. Even as Geralt reached them, the highwayman had already gripped Jaskier’s shoulder and used it as leverage to plunge a knife deep into the bard’s stomach.

Geralt saw Jaskier’s face turn into something grotesque, mouth open and eyebrows twisted at a comical angle. His hand gripped the knife, the other held out as if to stop the highwayman from pressing the blade in further. He didn’t make a sound, and he didn’t seem to notice when Geralt’s sword abruptly divorced the thief’s head from his body. The man hadn’t seen it coming, so he, too, did not make a sound; Geralt, on the other hand, had roared before the head had even rolled off its former body.

Jaskier collapsed backwards at the same moment the corpse tipped in the opposite direction. The sword hit the dirt, a little dust clouding up around the heavy metal, and Geralt fell to his knees at Jaskier’s side. He couldn’t help the growl that left his throat when he saw Jaskier’s quickly-bruising knuckles surrounding the hilt of the knife buried in his abdomen.

“You reckless son of a bitch,” Geralt swore through his teeth. 

“I’d caution you,” Jaskier laughed, blood coloring his mouth a darkish red, “not to speak of my mother that way.” And then a sheen came over his eyes, like he was seeing something over Geralt’s head, in the sunlight. “Ah, my mother…” And his eyes returned to Geralt’s amber ones, a genuine, unworried smile on his bloody lips. “I’ll get to see her again.” And his voice—God, he sounded so _hopeful,_ and Geralt’s stomach dropped like a dead weight. Before he could ask a question he knew he’d not want the answer to, Jaskier’s eyes were already slipping shut and his mind growing dark to the conscious world.

*******

Geralt paced in front of Jaskier’s body, wrapped as it was in blankets. A greenish paste-lined mortar and pestle sat on the ground in front of the fire, the concoction Geralt had made in record time now spread inside Jaskier’s wound. The blood-crusted knife had been deposited next to the grassy patch where Roach was tied to a tree, the blade seeming impassive, still and blameless now that it had been removed from Jaskier’s innards.

It didn’t make sense, on the one hand. Jaskier, Geralt knew, was one of the most devastatingly joyful beings he had ever met. And, despite this, he didn’t lie about sad things; when he saw someone in pain, he comforted them. When he heard something upsetting, he allowed himself to be upset by it. Yes; _on the one hand_ , this felt out of character. But in other ways it felt like a dozen absent puzzle pieces falling into place, ones that Geralt had never bothered to notice had been conspicuously missing.

It explained his strange behavior—Geralt remembered how Jaskier had just careened into his life like he had nothing to lose, following him to see the devil in the fields like the excitement was worth the potential death. How he seemed to only bed _taken_ women (and men) or beloved daughters (and the occasional son). How he forcefully befriended a reluctant monster-hunter with a reputation for killing mouthy humans, of which Jaskier decidedly was one. It made sense, suddenly, how trouble just seemed to _find_ Jaskier, Geralt realized. No, it wasn’t that trouble found Jaskier; it was that _Jaskier_ found _trouble._

Somewhere in his armor, under layers of scarred flesh, Geralt _did_ , in fact, possess a heart. And it was breaking.

The bard had a death wish.

“You’re making me dizzy—oh wait, no, that’s the muck you’ve _shoved into my belly_.”

Geralt stopped pacing and turned to face the man cocooned on the forest floor in the light of the fire and the setting sun. 

“Why do you want to die?”

Jaskier’s eyes went wide. He hacked violently, his eyelids rising and falling heavily. “Cutting right to the chase, then, are we?” he quipped in response. Apparently, it didn’t surprise him that Geralt didn’t even have the decency to wait until the bard was recovered to bring up this sore topic. “Why does it matter?”

For a moment, Geralt said nothing. A thoughtful expression in his features, he took a seat on a log perpendicular to Jaskier’s makeshift sickbed so that his line of sight wasn’t impeded by the fire. He picked up his half-full cup of ale resting in the grass. After a moment of spinning the liquid in the cup with a twist of his wrist, gazing into the liquor, he finally said, “Because _I_ don’t want you to die.”

While this revelation stunned Jaskier (Geralt never spoke of his feelings so candidly), he quickly recovered, and his face was mildly petulant. “I’m not really sure that’s your choice to make, witcher.” He tried to scowl, but it was hard to do when he was this sick and this vulnerable.

“How would your father feel, knowing you were gone?”

“My father _is_ gone, Geralt,” he snapped. “As is my entire village, and the butcher, and the blacksmith, and fucking _Potato_. They’re all fucking _burned_ ,” he hissed. “I went for a goddamn walk in the middle of the night after a fight with my father, spent an age on that damn cliffside, and when I came back, a fire had caught onto some of the houses and burned down at least half my village. All the people who meant something to me were charred in their sleep.” 

His voice was harsh, bitter, and decidedly unlike any version of Jaskier that Geralt had ever heard. 

But Geralt understood grief—how it took, and took, and it never seemed to end. How it had no clear end point in sight, and even after years of its being buried, it always found its way back to the surface to ruin what little happiness a man had stashed away for himself. He looked at Jaskier with this empathy, and asked, “How old were you?”

Images of glowing roofs in the black distance of night danced in front of Jaskier’s vision, remembering the screams and the shouts that had him racing back home, tripping over his own feet, saying over and over again in his mind that _they will be fine, they’ll all be fine. Mother will be fine_. 

Except Mother wasn’t fine; she had died along with all the others. Her and her blue ocean eyes had been burnt like so much kindling in his baron father’s fucking wood-and-stone castle. And Jaskier, damn it all, had survived. He survived to mourn her loss, and the loss of his childhood friends, and his fucking dog. He survived to regret his last words to the man who loved him most in the world. He survived to wonder why a fourteen-year-old boy had thought to sneak out in the wee hours of the night to sit by a cliffside. Why had Destiny seen fit to spare him, to damn him to this eternal fucking torment?

He told Geralt all this. He told the witcher of his fury, his intense need to make the pain dim and dull—how only music brought him joy, and how only danger made him feel alive, and how death sometimes felt like a pleasant offer—an offer to finally bring him _home_.

“When you go before your time, that agony…it doesn’t just disappear,” Geralt spoke around his tin cup of ale, gesturing in the air with one gloved hand. “You pass on the pain, Jaskier.” The witcher’s voice was deceptively calm, deceptively relaxed.

Lying wrapped in three heavy blankets, sweat pouring off his brow as the salve worked to knit his muscles back together and kill any infection in his blood, Jaskier had the chutzpah to laugh, albeit cynically. “Haven’t you been listening? I don’t have many people to miss me, Geralt. No one will have to carry my pain, worry not.” He coughed, a mechanical-sounding thing that churned Geralt’s stomach.

“Am I _no one_ , little lark?” Still, his voice remained steady. But the witcher’s eyes were sad, sadder than Jaskier had ever seen them.

Jaskier’s smile turned from a mocking grimace to a self-flagellating one. “Yes, well, I did make a terrible miscalculation, didn’t I? Actually _believing_ that tosh about witchers not having hearts?” he raised his eyebrows, wry humor in his tone as he shook his head. “Fucking misleading is what that was.”

Geralt dropped his gaze and sighed heavily, his shoulders hunching with the weight of new knowledge. 

There was a long pause in the conversation, wherein Geralt sat watching the fire and Jaskier sat watching Geralt. Night fell fully. The woods were silent.

“I liked to pretend,” he murmured at length. Geralt blinked slowly, his amber eyes finding Jaskier’s in the darkness. Jaskier cleared his throat, willing himself to explain. “I pretended for the sake of others’ comfort, at first, that my family was still alive. But then, it was like talking about them…” he paused, having no choice in his position but to let the tears run down his cheeks and the sobs run their course, “Geralt, it _soothed my soul_.” And then he did break down, crying heavily, his face contorted as the sobs wracked his body and no doubt twisted his sensitive healing torso. Immediately, Geralt came to kneel at his side, petting Jaskier’s hair out of his face. But he didn’t shush him. He let the man cry, only occasionally murmuring _I’m right here, little lark,_ and _you are not alone._

When Jaskier’s gasps subsided—so terribly cacophonous for being the sobs of a bard—he swallowed hard and met Geralt’s gaze above him. “Geralt,” he rasped, “when I spoke to you about them, it wasn’t for your comfort, but mine. I could pretend they really _were_ still miles away, that I was just off wandering the way my mother always said I would.” The tears hadn’t stopped, but Geralt only brushed them away with his gloved hand, paying them no real mind as Jaskier spoke. “I could imagine they were all waiting for me in that little coastal village, excited for me to return home and regale them with stories of the mighty witcher I called a friend, and our fantastic adventures together.” He chanced a watery smile, browning blood still clotting the corners of his mouth. “Telling you about them…” he trailed off, uncertain of how to proceed.

“It doesn’t make it easier,” Geralt finished for him, “but it sometimes makes it better.” 

At this, Jaskier smiled again, sadly, and he nodded. Geralt continued to pet him, and the bard’s eyes drifted shut. Several minutes passed before Jaskier heard Geralt’s voice quietly hum:

“Tell me, little lark, about the time Potato chewed your mother’s favorite lute.”

And he did. Jaskier laid in blankets, speaking until his throat was sore and the sun’s rays spilled over their camp through the trees, with Geralt all the while sitting at his side, running fingers through his hair.

And even with sweat and tears on his face and blood in his mouth, Jaskier’s eyes never looked so bright, nor his grin ever so beautiful.


End file.
